A Permanent Loss to New England

4HE tropical hurricane that swept across New England on September 2I, 1938, caused damage and destruction variously estimated at from a quarter to a half billion dollars. Appraisals of the loss have been dramatized largely in terms of human suffering and damage to buildings, telephone and telegraph lines, highways, forests, and crops. Less dramatic, but even more destructive, was the damage done to the land itself. Throughout the storm-swept area thousands of acres of rich farmland was literally ripped apart by the force of the rains and floodwaters. In the states most seriously affected Connecticut, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Vermont, and, of the Middle Atlantic States, New Jersey-it is estimated that about five million acres of cropland was exposed to the full force of the storm. Because the rains and floodwaters struck at a time when many fields had been bared by harvest or for the fall seeding, there were few impediments to the wholesale removal of surface soil. All sloping fields suffered severe soil losses except where adequately protected by vegetation (Fig. i). Surveys of damage done to harvested and growing crops have placed the loss of tobacco at about 6,ooo,ooo pounds, or almost 25 per cent of the total production forecast for the area. Some I50,000 bushels of onions were destroyed or seriously damaged. About 4,ooo,ooo bushels of apples, more than half of the estimated New England crop, were blown from the trees, at heavy loss to the owners. About a fourth of the apple trees were damaged to some extent, and io per cent are considered a total loss. Damage to forests was even more severe. According to the latest revised estimates of state and federal forestry officials, from 3 to 4 billion board feet of timber, or about one-eighth of the total annual cut of the whole country, was leveled by the force of the hurricane. In terms of permanent loss to the region, the wholesale removal of productive soil may equal the total of all other costs imposed by the storm. Buildings, telephone and telegraph lines, highways, bridges, and even the forests can be restored or the damage minimized by salvage. But the thousands of tons of productive topsoil, sluiced into the streams and rivers, are gone forever. This cream of fertile farmlands not only was removed from upland fields but was deposited on lower cultivated lands and in and along drainageways (Fig. 2). The future well-being of numerous farms and orchards (Fig. 3) throughout the seriously affected areas has been permanently impaired. I96

Erosion · Geography · Geomorphology · Geotechnical engineering · Hydrology (agriculture · Soil loss · Aeolian processes and effects · Environmental Science · Geology · Oceanography